Category Archives: Bay Area Magic events

Bay Area Magic events this weekend

Posted on by
1

This weekend features one “big” event of note and one “little” event that I wanted to highlight. I’ll start with “big” and move on from there.
This Saturday, the ChannelFireball Summer series culminates in a 5K at Superstars in San Jose. Unlike the 1Ks leading up to it, this event starts at 10am – so don’t show up two hours late as a super-sad panda. If you’re in the running for the overall series championship, remember that each match win at the 5K is worth 2 points instead of 1.
On the “small” side, we have the premier of Stanford FNM, courtesy of the Stanford Gaming Society. They’re a nice, chill group, and they’ve already been holding weekly drafts for a while now. This is an actual FNM, with an M11 draft, promo foils and everything. The event is at 7pm in Nitery 210, and if you’re coming, you might want to let Forrest Lin know (forrestl (at) stanford.edu). I think it’s cool that Forrest and SGS are getting this together, so if you’re on campus or in the area, you might want to head on by and give it a shot.

Goodall Jund at the 1K (aka “Why did I take the card out of my sideboard?”)

Posted on by
2

I’ve been enjoying the ChannelFireball Summer Series events, when I can make them, and this weekend my schedule was open enough to let me go to the Standard 1K on Saturday. I played Goodall Jund, and was doing reasonably well until I wasn’t. I had a great time, either way.
Click through to the extended entry for the list I ran and a round-by-round report.

Continue reading →

Naya Kill Team at the ChannelFireball Spring Series 5K

Posted on by

AjaniVengeant.jpegKnightoftheReliquary.jpegCunningSparkmage.jpeg
Congratulations to Phil Yam for winning the CFB Spring Series 5K this weekend. You can read the full coverage by clicking here – it includes a good deck tech by Phil about the Mythic build he piloted to victory.
I clocked in at 3-2 on the day before dropping, but since I won’t be talking about my tournament experience in this week’s In Development, I’m including a tournament report and deck list here.
Click through to the extended entry for both.

Continue reading →

The Spring series switches over to Extended this weekend

Posted on by
Reply

15Kbanner2.png
The ChannelFireball 15K Spring Series continues this weekend, with a brief dip into Extended. Come on by Superstars Game Center in San Jose this weekend for an Extended 1K featuring its own prize pool and qualification for the Spring Series 5K finale for the top 10% of the field.
Here are all the details.
I couldn’t make it to last week’s Standard event, but I plan on being there this weekend, with an all-new Extended deck along for the ride.
If you can make it to San Jose, come on by and play for prizes, qualification for the 5K, and a chance to see what weirdness I’m bringing this time around.

ChannelFireball $15K Spring Series

Posted on by

Earlier this week I wrote about a Standard $1K this Saturday that plugs into a not-fully described “big” event leading to a $5K down the line. Today, ChannelFireball released the full info:
CFB15KSeries.JPG
The ChannelFireball Spring $15,000 Series is a collection of $1K qualifier events spread across a variety of formats, all feeding into a $5K in late June. You can either pay $100 to enter the $5K, or qualify by ending up in the top 10% of the field at any of the preceding $1K events. There are, of course, prizes for winning the individual $1K events (this time around, first place gets a foil set of Worldwake).
Here’s the schedule:
March 27th – Standard, $20 entry fee
April 3rd – Extended, $20 entry fee
April 10th – Standard, $20 entry fee
May 1st – Sealed (Rise of the Eldrazi), $30 entry fee
May 8th- Sealed (Rise of the Eldrazi), $30 entry fee
May 15th – Booster Draft (Rise of the Eldrazi), $30 entry fee
May 22nd – Standard, $20 entry fee
June 5th – Sealed (Rise of the Eldrazi), $30 entry fee
June 19th – Standard, $20 entry fee
June 25th (a Friday) – Standard, $20 entry fee
June 26th – The Spring championship, $100 entry fee or qualify via one of the $1K events
Pretty cool. I’m going to be attending at least some of these qualifiers, and hopefully the big show at the end as well.

Next week at Superstars

Posted on by

At the last 5K, Shaun Gregson mentioned that Superstars would be having “something” special toward the end of March. I noticed that the Superstars schedule has updated, revealing the event. It is:
Superstars Spring Tournament Series Standard 1K
This is a 1K Standard tournament that has the requisite prizes and that qualifies the top 10% of the field for entrance to a 5K on June 26th, 2010. Listed prizes for this week’s event include various foils for first through third place (Worldwake set, Jace, and Baneslayer, in that order) in addition to the qualification and other prizes based on attendance.
This tournament costs $20 to enter, or $18 if you preregister on the web. It starts at 10am on March 27th – next Saturday.
You can always check the full schedule of events at Superstars by clicking here. As a reminder, the normal Magic schedule looks like this:
Monday – Draft at 7pm (ZZW)
Tuesday – Draft at 7pm (WWW)
Wednesday – Standard at 7pm
Thursday – Legacy at 7pm (10 proxy)
Friday – FNM featuring both Draft and Standard at 7pm (ZZW draft)
Saturday – Special events each week, so check the schedule
Sunday – Standard “win a box” tournament at 10am, along with special weekly events
…and, as always, if you can round up a set of people who want to draft, you can draft, scheduled or not.
If you’re within driving distance of San Jose, you should swing by for some of the events at Superstars. It’s a great environment full of nice folks.

Fun with Junk

Posted on by

After a hyper-busy week, I had a relaxing time at the Sunday Standard event at Superstars yesterday. With no time at all to prepare, I ran, card-for-card, the Stoneforge Mystic Junk list I wrote about in last week’s In Development. I went 4-1 and took second place; I think first may have gone to a Vampires deck that I never ended up playing. I beat Jund, 2-0 yet again in games that were quite fun. I still don’t understand why people are so traumatized by this deck, but I may touch on one reason in my In Development this week.
The most interesting deck I played against was the Mono-Green Tokens build in my last round match. I beat him 2-0, but I got to see how the deck worked better in some additional games we played after the match. I’m still favored, but the ability for his deck to do an end-of-turn Cobra Trap followed by an Overrun is hilarious. Similarly, an Eldrazi Monument powered by Garruk, Cobra Trap, and Bestial Menace is awesome and kind of scary. Fortunately, SMJ is a true cockroach, and can endure through these kinds of problems.
Most awesome was when I killed his Garruk and got Cobra Trapped afterward. Just imagine the Indiana Jones flavor there – the planeswalker calls down a Maelstrom Pulse to drive off his opponent’s planeswalker ally, and suddenly a swarm of cobras springs forth from the scorched earth left behind.
Awesome.
Other great fun on the day included a thirty-minute comeback game against Mythic, which saw me go all the way down to two life, and then come right back up to over sixty life and the win, and using a Tectonic Edge to screw up my Jund opponent’s combat math and swing for the win with my Knights.
I’m really enjoying Standard right now, and look forward to any opportunity to play it with our great pool of local players.

Top 32 coverage from the ChannelFireball February 5K

Posted on by

Video coverage of the ChannelFireball February 5K is up. Here’s my match in the top 16 against Tristan Shaun Gregson (of Magic TV fame) playing Boss Naya:

For the record, I didn’t have to die that turn in game two. As I mentioned in my column earlier this week, I literally miscounted my mana and, having done so, made the “aggressive” play that made no sense. Ah, well. It was midnight.
I think these videos turned out quite well. Head over to the ChannelFireball YouTube channel to see videos of several matches from the top 32, including the finals, all with quality narration by Eric Levine.

Interview with Grant Gardiner

Posted on by

Grant was my opponent in the round of 32, playing the genuinely frightening Unearth deck.

As he describes, his deck just doesn’t interact with most of the field. When I realized what he was playing, I had a brief flash of panic before I devised my game plan against him. Our match took an hour and a half, and was by far the longest in that round.
Grant’s a nice guy, and I really enjoyed our match – it was among the best I’d had all day.